July 30, 2012

Joshua Larson and Carrie Shores of Oakland, CA architecture firm Larson Shores have been busy. They've recently completed a funky modern, mixed-use coffee bar and Asian furniture gallery, Monkey Forest Road Cafe and Gallery. Now, Joshua is in the middle of a full scale renovation and interiors project in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. Carrie is helping to revive an Oakland institution, the New Parkway Theater, which leases space in an old warehouse in the city, by developing their new floor plans and conceptualizing the transformation of the facade. This week's Friday Five is a mix of what inspires the duo, separately and as a team.

1. DZINE
Joshua and Carrie both love DZINE, a showroom inspired by the great showrooms of Milan. It;s carefully edited; the showroom floor is restricted to a handful of notable manufacturers of high-end contemporary furniture. The placement of furniture, accessories, and art is carefully planned to create vignettes that offer more than mere display; rather, the environment presents a unified design vision-an aesthetic, and attitude, a lifestyle.

2. Axel Vervoordt's Kanaal Gallery
A recent visit to Axel Vervoordt's Kanaal Gallery in Belgium left Joshua speechless and inspired. Kanaal at Wijnegem is a former distillery complex consisting of several large brick-and-concrete industrial warehouses with adjoining grain silos originally constructed in the late 19th century in 2000, the Axel Vervoordt Company purchased the site and transformed the setting into the perfect location for exposition rooms, offices, warehouses, and restoration workshops. In the lofty industrial rooms of Kanaal, Axel Vervoordt furthered his ideas of how we might wish to live in the 21st century: enormous spaces, total purity, lack of decoration-just the necessary architecture and inspiring objects and art. In these rough, empty spaces, an old piece of furniture becomes a contemporary piece of art.

3. Arkanary II iPhone Speaker
In our studio there is always music playing, and Pandora and the iPhone are usually involved. Often when working on residential projects, incorporating the TV and music system can be a battle, because we want to embrace technology, but hide the cords. Carrie recently ran across the Arkanary II, a great speaker that snaps into the iPhone. Like many simple designs, thought and design intent went into this product. The old-fashioned form is set against the new technology, creating an interesting juxtaposition that is really fun. The designer, Sang Lee, set up the perfect angle of the phone so the user can see what is happening on the screen, plus there are no cords!

4. Milena Zu
One of the exciting parts of designing restaurants and retail spaces is that your experiences as a designer are broadened by the creations and products your clients bring to the projects. This is how Carrie came to know the jewelry designer Milena Zu. Originally a native Italian, Milena has lived in Bali for over 13 years. She has developed a technique for hand weaving metal to create an exquisite mesh that she then forms into unique pieces of jewelry. The pieces are surprisingly light, engage beautifully with the body, and organic in form.

5. Pancho
Joshua adores his two-year-old rescue dog, Pancho, who seems to be disguised as a fox.

July 23, 2012

Tadao Ando's design for the Koshino House features two parallel concrete rectangular confines. The forms are partially buried into the sloping ground of a national park and become a compositional addition to the landscape. Placed carefully as to not disturb the pre-existing trees on the site, the structure responds to the adjacent ecosystem while the concrete forms address a more general nature through a playful manipulation of light.

The northern volume consists of a two-story height containing a double height living room, a kitchen and a dining room on the first floor with the master bedroom and a study on the second floor. The southern mass then consists of six linearly organized children's bedrooms, a bathroom and a lobby. Connecting the two spaces is a below grade tunnel that lies beneath the exterior stairs of the courtyard.

Ando used the space within the two rectangular prisms as a way to express the fundamental nature of the site. This space reveals a courtyard that drapes over an contours to the natural topography. A wide set of stairs follows the sloping land into the enclosed exterior space and allows the light that penetrates through the canopy of trees into the sunken courtyard. This self-governing space represents the fold of nature that has been bound by the conditional structures and become synthetic.

Narrow apertures have been punched through the facades adjacent to the exterior staircase and manipulate complex crossings of natural light and shadow into the interior spaces. The patterns provide the only amount of ornament to the simple rooms. Other slots are cut from various planes of the two modules to produce the same effect of complexity throughout the entire house.

July 3, 2012

DZINE is pleased to announce that the "ANDO" vase designed by Tadao Ando for Venini is now on display at the showroom. An absolute synthesis between shape and chromatism, "ANDO" is the perfect evidence of the ability in works of glass.

We originally did a post on the "ANDO" vase a year ago here as it was designed for the celebration of Venini's 90th anniversary.

We hope that you will visit the showroom soon to see the "ANDO" vases in person as well as many other pieces from Venini's ArtGlass and ArtLight collection currently on display.

DZINE

Elegance. Simplicity. Functionality. DZINE represents a philosophy of design that is truly contemporary – one that encompasses not what is merely new, but what is essential and timeless.

A furniture showroom dedicated to the best of European design, DZINE occupies an airy 15,000 sq. ft. in the San Francisco design district. Whitewashed walls and bare concrete floors create a neutral backdrop. The effect is minimal, yet inviting. It is a space that places emphasis on the line, proportion and detail of the furniture itself, reflecting the respect for the integrity of each design and its creator.